Monday, August 01, 2011

Mini-Review: Hexed by Kevin Hearne

Following up on his successful debut, Hounded (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound), Kevin Hearne’s second book in The Iron Druid Chronicles, Hexed (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound), offers another satisfying dose of action-filled, wish-fulfillment, urban fantasy fun. This will be brief, because my thoughts on Hexed pretty much mirror what I wrote about Hounded.

In Hounded, the 2000-year old druid, Atticus, faced off against ancient Irish gods and a few witches. In Hexed, the fight is with more witches, a few succubi, a fallen angel and a couple of radical witch hunters. Atticus is once again joined by his vampire and werewolf friends and his ever-present dog through a number of supernatural fights in the vicinity of Phoenix, Arizona.

These books are simply fun – don’t think too hard about them and the world that Hearne creates, just sit back and enjoy the ride. The takes on various pantheons of gods are fun, the action satisfying and it’s all woven together with a geek humor that refuses to take itself seriously. Another huge positive (for me anyway) is that they are short and fast to read – Hexed took me just a couple of days to read, and I could easily have knocked it out over a relaxing afternoon (not that I ever had one of those). Hearne’s writing is quickly becoming something of a comfort read for me, probably in no small part due to them being set in Arizona.

The next book in the series, Hammered (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound), is already out on the streets and Del Rey has picked up Hearne to write more books in the series with Tricked coming in April, 2012.

2 comments:

GunMetalBlue said...

Good to hear the second one is as fun as the first. I like the series for its lightheartedness and adventure. Not to mention Oberyn, who makes me laugh.

Unknown said...

Excellent blog! It seems I could learn a lot from you how to write in mine ;)!
Good info, reviews! Yet, I guess there are a lot of books, stories with the usual, ordinary already characters like kings, knights, princesses, vampires, witches, dwarves, wizards with sharp hats, etc? We can read about them in almost every book of the genre? There should be new, unseen and unknown characters, creatures in the stories. Creatures like weightless korks, glowing, living balls, night fruit, fish-keepers, Brown faces, Fiery men, etc I use in some of my works (Tale Of The Rock Pieces, The Opposite Of Magic, etc), sound more interesting than the usual?
I know the most important in the fantasy genre are the wisdom, good plot and writing skills but some "fresh blood" of new characters would make the fantasy books better?
Keep the good work going! Will be glad to follow your blog! LET THE WONDERFUL NOISE OF THE SEA ALWAYS SOUNDS IN YOUR EARS! (a greeting of the water dragons' hunters - my Tale Of The Rock Pieces).

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